Swiss startups to fill technology gaps

Robert Bosch has been in the forefront of innovation, engineering and technology in India for decades. It’s no surprise that a company with such keen focus on continuous improvement has chosen Switzerland as their partner of choice to power innovative solutions for tomorrow.

Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Private Limited (RBEI) and swissnex India, Consulate General of Switzerland in Bangalore have joined hands to develop a continuous engagement program to connect RBEI with Swiss startups and applied researchers in four key areas – Healthcare, Mobility, Smart City and Industry 4.0.

Switzerland has been consistently topping the global innovation index for over a decade, and much of this performance is due to the superior quality of applied research in Swiss universities such as ETH and EPFL. In the last 5 years, swissnex India has coached more than 350 Swiss researchers and entrepreneurs for scaling into the India market, 35 of these are actively conducting business with India. Having interacted with applied researchers in the last 3-4 years, through swissnex India’s joint program with DST and SINE IIT-Bombay called the Academia Industry Training, RBEI was convinced of the exceptional quality of these commercially viable research prototypes.

While swissnex India continues to coach Swiss startups that wish to enter or validate the Indian market, this collaboration increases the probability of concrete translation by flipping the approach.The collaboration provides a platform for seeking patented (or patentable) solutions to a known problem statement. For a thought leader like RBEI that wishes to engage more deeply with newer technologies for the future, swissnex becomes the go-to parter to procure solutions that aligns with their strategic goals for the next 8-10 years.

“It’s an exciting platform for Swiss startups who wish to enter the Indian market. Being fostered by an industry leader like Robert Bosch, while having the opportunity to explore the Indian market is an absolutely brilliant way to scale up”, says Dr. Swetha Suresh, Sr. Corporate Innovation Manager at swissnex India, who brought this collaboration to fruition.

Here’s how it works…

12-20 Swiss researchers and startups at certain maturity, will be selected through a competitive process and pre-defined problem statements by RBEI

Upon being screened by RBEI, the startups will be coached by swissnex India on business model and use cases for the industry

RBEI will evaluate all the coached Swiss startups on a rolling basis and take over the business-fit and the joint go-to market strategy after extensive internal evaluations and multiple interactions with the Swiss startup

Through this collaboration, swissnex India and RBEI wish to strengthen deep-tech research commercialisation. The batch of selected startups may also travel to India in Q1 2019 for finalising legal aspects and meeting clients face to face.

“We are excited with this partnership as Bosch in India would get an opportunity to partner with Swiss startups working on cutting-edge technologies, which have the potential to disrupt the market. This will also enable us to foster Open Innovation even more strongly and contribute to the innovation ecosystem.”, said the team from Bosch.

“We annually coach c.50 Swiss applied researchers and deep tech startups for India business model and market entry. Many of these are path-breaking innovations which could use a strong strategic partner like Robert Bosch in India for their go-to market strategy. This partnership could be a game changer in scaling and commercialising deep science and technology”, added Prateek Khare, Head of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at swissnex India.